The Downfall Of A Giant Ego Named Mike Daisey

So this happened: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory

Seems that New York theater's wunderkind Mike Daisey got caught having fabricated large parts of his current hit show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. He was caught because This American Life aired an excerpt of the show in January and he, presumably for the first time in his life, got fact checked. And not only was his show found to be filled with lies, he lied to Ira Glass and the TAL producer while they were doing said fact checking. Not just sticking to his claims of his stories being true but also lying about the name of the translator he used while in China and even claiming her phone number no longer worked. An avalanche of lies in a desperate attempt to cover up the original lies. Unfortunately for TAL they aired the excerpt before they discovered they had been duped. But at least they did finally discover the truth and made an immediate move to remedy the situation and offered a retraction.

Before we go any further, a disclosure of my bias when writing about this: I can't stand Mike Daisey. I knew him years ago in Seattle when we were involved in the same theater company, I directed him in one show, assistant directed him in another, and was around when he began his monologue shows. He is the most shameless self-promoter I've ever met in my life, is amazingly self-aggrandizing, and has an ego that outweighs even his 300-something pound frame. (My main reason for turning down his friend request a couple of years ago on Facebook was basically because I knew his sole reason for using Facebook is so he can promote himself rather than actually using it to catch up and stay in touch with old friends.) And his shows, monologues sold as true experiences from his life that has made him very successful and mildly famous, never passed the smell test in my mind.

I have been telling people for a long time that Mike Daisey's shows were bullshit but not too many people seemed to take me seriously. I think there were many who thought I was just jealous of his success but that's not the case. I've never been jealous of impressing wine-spritzer-drinking, upper-middle class white liberals with shallow, pointless shows that they are convinced are the deepest pieces of art they've ever seen. I certainly didn't succeed in my theatre career and eventually moved on from it, but I never wanted what he's got. I would admit that it annoys me that I know so many more talented and more honest writers/performers who have gotten nowhere while he succeeds in selling his drivel as "provocative art" to moneyed theater companies around the country.

But several people I knew in theater from my time in Seattle have stayed fans and friends with Daisey. I don't get it. I suppose there are many people who find his shows witty and entertaining. I never did, but that's just personal taste. People like what they like. The real issue here is credibility and Mike Daisey's lack of it.

Since getting caught in his fabrications he posted a statement on his website. It's fairly sort so I'll post the whole thing here.

"This American Life" has raised questions about the adaptation of AGONY/ECSTASY we created for their program. Here is my response:

I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by The New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.

What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic ­- not a theatrical ­- enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret. I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China.

There are several issues with this statement. First off, really Mike, you're sticking by and claiming to be proud of a show that has been exposed as a fraud? Are you kidding me? And you say allowing your monologue to air on This American Life is your only regret. What about including some of those same falsehoods in an op-ed in the New York Times? Don't you regret that, too? Probably not. The New York Times does, though. They've removed the offending paragraph and posted a statement with the piece on-line. What about all of the TV, radio and print interviews you've done with these personal experience stories as the base of your supposed "expertise" on the subject of workers' rights in China? Fact is, you did a hell of a lot more media appearances than just TAL, things that had nothing to do with using a "dramatic license" and you never once clarified that there were parts of your show that were not true. Your claim that the show has integrity is laughable. You say your ONLY regret was letting TAL run an excerpt of your show, doing your best to make yourself seem naive about this thing called the media - or that you were even aware that TAL is a news show - but don't address the fact you lied out your ass to them during the fact checking process.

The most infuriating part of your statement is the horribly (but typical) self-aggrandizing claim that your show is responsible for sparking a "growing storm of attention and concern" about these issues. Maybe the kind of people who pay $80 to see pretentious theater were completely unaware of the fact that the oppressive regime of China has slave labor conditions in factories that make products we buy but not those of us that actually pay attention to what is going on in the world. This issue has been in the media for a long time. You jumped on a bandwagon. And you did it for less than altruistic reasons.

OK, I'll stop pretending to talk to Mike Daisey now. Thing is, this is typical Mike Daisey moral rationalizing. He got caught in his lies so he plays the theater card, using the catch-all phrase "dramatic license." He tends to redefine his work to whatever is most convenient for him at the time. He calls himself an actor until he wants to separate himself from theater, then he calls himself a monologist. He's denied what he does is theater until he needs it for cover. Early in his career he denied that he was influenced by Spalding Grey, claiming it was his own thing. Later, after Gray committed suicide, Daisey published a tribute to him that went on about Gray's influence on his own work. Not coincidentally I'm sure, he had a show opening about that time.

Mike Daisey will use whatever he can to promote himself and he always has. His "crusade" against Apple and Chinese labor issues is no different. I never bought for a minute that it was about anything but advancing his career and heightening his fame. He couldn't give a shit about Chinese workers.

I can't believe no one, especially producers who paid for it, didn't have more suspicions about this show from the beginning. How could it be that I seem to be the only person who thought his work smelled of garbage? All of it. And this one seemed to have the potential to be the worst one of all. When I first read about The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs the description said that Daisey had asked the Chinese government permission to go to the factories and interview workers but they said no. So he decided to go and do it secretly. A 300+ pound white American in an Asian country with an oppressive regime and we're told that he succeeded in staying under the radar. Really? How is it that anyone bought this shit?

As I suspected, what Daisey basically did was spin a tale based on previously published media reports about conditions in Chinese tech factories and packaged it all as his own personal experiences. He's only admitted to the specific things he got caught lying about (and has now excised them form the show for the remaining performances at the Public Theater while also adding a prologue about this being dramatic piece.") but I, like a lot of people now, find it hard to believe that TAL caught the only lies in the show. Surely there are many, many more. In this show and others. Let's not forget that Daisey has always marketed his shows as memoirs of personal experiences, it is the basis of his entire success.

The Seattle playwright Paul Mullin has posted a lot on his Facebook page about this. We are actually not friends on Facebook but have several mutual friends that have commented on his posts, which is why I saw them. I kind of knew Paul in passing in my Seattle theater days in the 90s but I was in one of his short pieces once and we've had maybe a handful of short conversations. But I do have a lot of respect for him as a theater artist and writer. He made this comment in response to something someone wrote about why Daisy didn't just sell his work as fiction:

"...sadly I think it's as simple as fiction doesn't get Frey to Oprah or Daisey to Ira. And Frey and Daisey damn well know it."

I think he really nailed it with that comment. I know there are people who think Mike Daisey is witty and entertaining regardless of whether or not his shows are true. But I think they're wrong. Daisey's whole aesthetic depends on the audience believing these events really happened to him. Without that his stories are a lot less interesting and nobody knows that more than Mike Daisey. There is a big difference between telling you a story about a guy who got struck by lightning on a road trip or telling you about when I was on this road trip and I got struck by lightning. This is a claim in Mike Daisey's first show. Like most of the material in that show I didn't buy it when I saw it opening night. I didn't even buy most of those stories when I heard them months earlier over drinks at The Frontier Room. He rang false to me from the beginning. If Mike had stuck to stories that happened when he was supposed to be alone this may have never happened to him. He made the mistake of doing it in a situation that could be followed up on. I suppose getting away with it for so long caused an amazing amount of hubris.

Dammit, context matters. If an entire body of work is presented as fact then it should be fact. Not some of it. Not most of it. All of it. And you don't get to change the context after the fact.

Hopefully this will cause a closer look at all his previous work and it is long overdue. I'm not sure what will come of this. It is quite possible that he comes out of it more famous and more in demand. He will certainly do his best, opportunist that he is, to make that the case. Remember folks, Karma isn't real no matter how much we wish it so. But what I hope happens is a complete repudiation of him and his work. No theater should ever produce him again and anyone that has him booked for upcoming shows should cancel just like TAL did for the Chicago performance they were sponsoring.

I'm not sure what The Public theater will do. Their current public statements of support and the editing of his show to excise the discovered lies may just be an attempt to save face. Maybe after the show closes they will wash their hands of him and publicly acknowledge they never should have produced his work. One can hope. If I ran that company I would demand he return all the money.

It would be nice to see all the media outlets that brought him on their shows and treated him like an expert on the topic of slave-wage labor, like Bill Maher, will offer apologies to their audiences. It does look like at least the New York Times will likely never let him write another op-ed in their paper, though I guess you can't be too sure seeing how they let Ross Douthat bend the truth week after week.

He also released a book based on his show about his three years working at Amazon.com in Seattle. It was sold as a non-fiction title. I imagine there may be someone finally taking a longer look at that, especially over at the Amazon board room.

Maybe there will be even more repercussions on the stolen material front. It is looking like some of the stories that Daisey sold as his own experience were based on information from work done by actual journalist. I'm fairly uneducated in the legal qualifications for something to be plagiarism or copyright infringement but hopefully all the reporters out there who wrote about Foxconn and other Chinese factories are looking at the script for Daisey's show and seeing if they have any case for suing his ass for stealing their intellectual property.

You may be wondering if this matters or if it is that big of a deal. It does and it is. When Mike Daisey made the decision to use oppressed workers' plights for his own personal gain - especially in making false accusations against the factory owners when there were plenty of real ones to use - he hurt the credibility of a worthy movement. There are people on the ground doing real work on this cause and now they may have been tainted by Daisey's credibility problems since he tried to make himself a prominent figure on this issue. Who knows how far their hard work has been set back? Look at how unions in our own country have been easily painted as corrupt organizations run by mobsters because of those who decided to use labor organizations for their own agendas.

One of Mike Daisey's excuses to This American Life after he got caught was that he took shortcuts (his word for his lies) in his "passion to be heard."

This reminded me of Newt Gingrich's reasoning that he committed adultery because he loved his country so much.

And just like Gingrich, the real reason Mike Daisey did it is because he's an despicable narcissist.

Who I Plan To Vote For

I had some email exchanges last week with my step-dad. This is a guy who married my mother when I was 16 (and was smart enough to divorce her by the time I was 29) and despite his conservative political bent I have always adored the man. But like so many other conservatives in America in recent years he has jumped on the batshit-crazy train.

This whole email back-and-forth started with him forwarding (does everyone over 60 only know how to hit the forward button on email?) an email about some ad in a newspaper taken out by some doctor who states that he and his staff paid over 270,000 in federal taxes last year but that wasn't even enough to cover Michelle Obama's recent Hawaiian vacation, which supposedly cost $1.4 million.

So I responded with a bunch of various points. I asked if this doctor had ever taken out the same kind of ad when George W. Bush was taking a record number of vacations at a similar cost. I made the point that it was the President on that trip as well, so it wasn't just Michelle Obama's vacation and wondered why he was picking on her, suggesting that he probably wanted to call her an uppity nigger bitch in his ad. I brought up many other points about not hearing any bitching from conservatives about fiscal responsibility when Bush was driving our economy in to the ground and suggested that maybe race was a factor in conservatives' opinion of Obama.

In one reply I made a point that the Obamas were exactly the kind of black people that conservatives claim to love: Worked hard to get where they are, were never on welfare, had their kids after marrying and have stayed married, and have never in their lives played the so-called race card. The response I got to this was that my step-dad said he didn't have a personal beef with the Obama family and think he's a good family man. No he doesn't hate Obama personally, it is (and I'm not making this quote up) "the deliberate destruction of our free society that I decry."

Seriously.

How do you have a rational conversation with someone who would say that? The answer is, you can't.

Now we all have heard this before in the rhetoric that comes out of the right-wing establishment. But we all know that most of what the lunatics running for the Republican nomination and the opposition party members of Congress say are just empty statements made for political positioning. I seriously doubt that mitt Romney really believes that Obama is "waging war on free enterprise." (Well, I seriously doubt Mitt Romney believes anything.) I don't think Newt Gingrich really believes that Obama wants to destroy the Catholic Church or that the President supports "infanticide." I don't think that even Rick Santorum, a holder of three college degrees, believes that getting an education is snobby. And certainly no Republican who has called Obama a Socialist (pretty much all of them have) really thinks he's a Socialist, unless they really don't understand the definition of that word.

No, they just say a bunch of incendiary shit because they are trying to win elections or block legislation supported by the President. Nobody really believes any of this nonsense. Except, apparently, people like my step-dad. I always heard people like this existed in real life and not just on YouTube videos but I never really believed it until now. (To be fair, it is not totally the fault of the nutjob Republican politicians and their incendiary rhetoric. After divorcing my insane mother my step-dad married a crazy born-again Christian and this is when the journey from fiscal conservative Reagan Republican to Glenn Beck-like insanity began.)

Listening to the idiots who want to be President and their followers has made me really think a lot about how I feel about our President. Like many Progressives I have my issues with Obama. Unlike conservatives, my issues are based on reality and not shit that I make up. Those on the right seem to have issues with Obama being a Socialist, not being born in America, being a secret Muslim, waging a war on Christianity, creating our economic woes, hating Israel, slashing our military budget, wanting to open our borders to illegal immigrants, being soft on terrorists, etc. See, none of these things are true. Obama saved Capitalism, was born in Hawaii, is a Christian, pretty much saved our economy from collapsing in to something worse than the Great Depression, has the same Israel policy as every president since the creation of that country, raised the Pentagon's budget, has deported more illegal immigrants every year than Bush ever did, and fucking killed Osama bin Laden* and several other leading terrorists, including an American citizen in Yemen.

[*To be clear, I actually don't support such a thing as what he did here. Osama bin Laden, based on all accounts of the raid in Pakistan, could have been easily taken alive and had charges of mass murder brought against him in an international criminal court. I understand the arguments for what we did, but I firmly believe we should show the world why we do it differently. We believe in solving our problems and our crime, even egregious ones, with due process and a rule of law. That does not mean two bullets to the head without a charge or trial. We showed the world what our ethical standard should be when we gave fair trials to the surviving Nazi leadership at the end of World War II. If you think Osama bin Laden committed worse atrocities than the Nazis you are out of your fucking mind.]

It is not just the weird Birthers and insane Rush Limbaughs of the world who make up shit about him. Mitt Romney has made a whole campaign about accusing Obama of having policies that are the exact opposite of Obama's actual policies. Not only that, but Romney touts policies that are the exact same as Obama's. Romney calls Obama's Israel and Iran policies dangerous and wrong, but when you read his they are EXACTLY the same. And the guy who wrote Obama's health care bill, that Romney calls the path to Socialism and takes away our personal liberty, is the same EXACT guy that wrote Romney's health care bill in Massachusetts. Those two plans are so alike it's ridiculous.

My criticisms of Obama are based in reality. Guantanamo Bay prison is still open despite the order he signed on inauguration day for it to close within one year. Extraordinary rendition of terrorism suspects to other countries - ones with looser laws and morals about torture - still goes on. Halliburton continues to receive no-bid contracts from the government to do their evil in the name of America. Obama has continued the stance that the President has the right to hold any terrorism suspect he wants, for as long as he wants without charge or trial. I also think he could have done more for the economy, including standing up to the Republicans to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich. And his health care plan, while probably an improvement, still falls about a million miles short of the single-payer system that we should have - you know, the one they have in the rest of the civilized world. There are other things, but you get the point.

But the mindless attacks on him from the right have made me think about the things he has done that wouldn't have been had John McCain become president.

Obama has stood up for gay rights more than any other president in our history. You may or may not see letting gays and lesbians getting killed for their country as an improvement of their rights and their dignity. But if you've seen that picture of the Marine just home from deployment - in the hangar on a military base in front of everyone - being held up by his boyfriend with his legs wrapped around his boyfriend's waist while they kiss passionately...., well tell me their lives aren't better.

He stood for the rights of women's health over religious dogma. Woman have a friend in the White House like never before (not counting Eleanor Roosevelt).

We were saved from having the Greatest Depression. Period. If you doubt that you are not looking at the facts. Things have been bad, yes. But I think people don't understand how bad it could be. If McCain won we;d be wishing we were as well off as Greece right now.

The health plan ain't great but at least we have something. You think McCain was going to write one?

Two great appointments to the Supreme Court. Can you imagine a continuation of the ideology that gave us Roberts and Alito?

There are other things, smaller issue but no less significant. Like cutting the banks out of the federal student loan program, which saved the taxpayers money. And you can read more of them here.

Point is, we are better off with him than the alternative offered last time and will be A LOT better off than with any of the alternatives being offered this time.

Would like to have a Dennis Kucinich-type president who would have a Department of Peace in the Cabinet, give us a single-payer health care system, and free college for everyone? You bet I would. Am I going to get that choice anytime soon? I'm not going to hold my breath.

The more I've thought about it over the last year or so, while listening to these bizarre ad hominem attacks on him, the more I've come to the realization that Obama is the best president we've had in my lifetime. It is really no contest for me. (I was born during Nixon, if you need context.)

I've spent much of my voting life casting my ballot for third party candidates who had no chance of winning and will probably do so many more times in my life.

But not this year. I'm voting for Obama, again. Without reservation and without hesitation.

The Occupy Movement

I know it is probably a little late to be chiming in about the Occupy Wall Street movement at this point but, what the hell, everybody and their mother has voiced their opinion about them at this point so I'll offer my two bits.

Last month my wife, our daughter and I marched with Occupy Chicago. We found, as I expected, a group of people who care deeply about the future of the world and the glaring economic inequity and the damage it has caused. I was proud to have my three-year-old daughter alongside of them. It is not my future they fight for, it is my daughter's.

A big dig at the movement I've heard from the right-wing media is that it is just a bunch of disgruntled young people. This isn't really true, there is representation from all age groups in this movement, though the leadership does seem to be heavy on a younger generation. But even if this was just young people, so what?

Who the fuck do you think makes real change happen in this world? By and large it is young people. Who was marching against the Vietnam war in the 60s? Who fought the civil rights battles alongside Martin Luther King, Jr? The reason we have so many of the leaders and participants of the civil rights movement still with us today is that they were so young back then. Julian Bond helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee when he was 20-years-old, led protests against segregation all through his early 20s, was only 25 when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law and began serving as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives at the age of 27. Stokely Carmichael, Diane Nash and the great John Lewis, other co-founders of the SNCC, were all of similar age. MLK led the Montgomery bus boycott at the age of 26.

Of course this movement is young people. This is what young people do. Our world has done its best to keep them distracted with gadgets, TV, video games, etc to make them as apathetic as possible, but they care about the future a lot more than we want to give them credit. Instead of dismissing them we should be thanking them.

And how can anyone put down a movement for being a bunch of disgruntled young people and then turn around and support the crazy crowd of screaming, angry, middle-aged white people that calls itself the Tea Party?

To the Occupy movement I say this: Stay strong brothers and sisters and screw those people that dismiss you because you're young. Keep fighting for your future and my kid's future.

And, at the risk of sounding like a condescending middle-aged guy, I'm so proud of you. The next generation is not full of nothing but those who have buried their brains in the world of iPods, texting and angry birds. Like I sometimes think.

You are beautiful and I love you.

And thank you.

Gas Whores

A while back, around the beginning of the summer, I started to see postings on Facebook from many people complaining about the price of gas. One of the things I saw posted by a few people was a copied and pasted call to action for a one-day gas boycott. This little tidbit started off by claiming that "This worked when we did it last year..."

Which is, of course, complete bullshit. These stupid gas price protests have been floating around the Internet since I've known there was such a thing called the Internet. Not only is there no evidence to suggest that any of them worked, there is not even any evidence of a significant drop in gas sales on the day of the supposed boycott. But that's not even the point.

I commented on one of these posts put up by a "friend" (one of those people I knew for ten minutes in college who I never even thought about again until she "friended" me on Facebook). What I basically said was that she was wrong if she thought that "worked" last year and that in reality we have the cheapest gasoline in the industrialized world due to our government heavily subsidizing it through direct payments and tax breaks to oil companies, spending trillions of dollars on wars to keep friendly-to-the-US regimes in power and paying off those regimes with "economic aid." All to keep the oil flowing. So the true cost of gas is a hell of a lot more than we're paying for it in this country. I also suggested that a way to save money would be to drive less.

The reaction my points was amazingly vitriolic, from the person whose status I was commenting on as well as a bunch of her friends. She went after me for being someone who "doesn't" understand what it's like to have to depend on a car since I live in the "big city" (seriously, she called me a big city folk) and have access to public transportation but she doesn't. And she needs her car to do things like shop for groceries, pick up the kids and go to church. Why she made a point of telling me what she does with her car I'll never know, but I would tell her that skipping church would save you money in many ways and maybe restore some brain cells lost to the ignorance of faith in the process.

She also made some sort of reference to me being married to a rich doctor as to allude to the idea that I don't understand the struggle of regular folk. Comical comment seeing as how I lived below the poverty level for the entirety of my 20s and a good portion of my 30s, my wife has been an attending physician making real "doctor money" for less than two years (and I think a lot of people who know I'm married to a doctor have an exaggerated number in their head about what my wife makes that does not match reality) and the person making this comment is herself married to a quack...er...chiropracter.

Then I was called the "most negative person" she knows - despite that she doesn't really "know" me. The oddest thing about this was I was being called negative for pointing out that we Americans have got it pretty good and our fuel is pretty cheap considering the human, environmental and political cost. We have cheap, subsidized fuel that she was whining about being too expensive, but I'm the negative one?

Thing is, everybody who participates in this little exercise of bitching about the price of gasoline always say they don't have a choice, they need their car for everything they do and they have no way to cut down their driving. This is usually bullshit. Everybody has a choice. Especially middle class white people, who are always the ones bitching the most about shit like this. Even if you live in a tiny town without any buses there are ways to drive less.

How many times do people in suburban and semi-rural areas take car trips that are one mile or just a few miles? The kind of distance that can be taken on a bike in a fairly short amount of time? It just takes a willingness on the part of these corn-fed lard asses do climb on one and do it. But no, wouldn't want to that, it might require some energy.

This isn't about gas being too expensive. This is about Americans being being the laziest fucking people in the world who also don't have any sense of cause and effect. Gas cost what it cost because we use so goddamn much of it. Pretty straightforward economics involving the rule of supply and demand. We use such an insane amount of the stuff that the price goes up. If we used less the price would go down and you'd be saving money in two ways. and there would be better air quality to boot.

It is amazing to me that gasoline is really the only thing that people seem to be so hypersensitive about the cost. Where is the outrage over all of the things that cost a lot more than fuel?

I did a little looking up of prices of items that most of us probably use and many should be more crucial to your life than gas. I then figured out the per gallon price of these things. No, this is not an extensively researched list, I just checked the general price of some things on Peapod and figured it out. But look how much we are paying for some things.

Milk - $3-$4/gallon
Soy milk (what we drink in our family) - $6-$8/gallon
Ketchup - $9-$15/gallon
Bottled water - $9-$10/gallon (I'm also a fierce opponent of individual plastic bottles of water, but look how much you see people walking around with it and you don't hear a peep that it cost too much)
6-pack of Stella beer - $16/gallon (You can half this amount if you drink shitty beer like Coors, Bud or Miller and add a little more if you like good craft beers. I went middle of the road with Stella)
Pint of Stella at a bar - $35/gallon
Salad dressing or baby food or pasta sauce - $20-$40/gallon
Cheap shampoo (like Suave) - $20/gallon

And my favorite one is printer ink. If you ink cartridges new for your printer you are paying over $11, 000/gallon for ink! Even if you go the cheapest route possible, buying a refill kit that gives you bottles of ink that you then painstakingly fill the empty cartridges yourself, you would still pay over $700/gallon. Talk about something that is way more expensive than it should be. Especially if you look in to how much it cost to produce.

Look at that list and tell me that any of those things should cost more than gasoline. Why do we hear no bitching about the price of all this other - I would say more important - stuff?

Fact is, we are a country of gas whores. That would make the oil companies our pimps. And when you are a whore you have choices to make when your pimp starts slapping you around and taking all your money.

Stop being a whore.

Netflix Bitching

I'm sure by now - even if you don't have a Netflix account - you've heard about the change in price structuring by Netflix. Basically they started charging separately for the streaming service instead of including it in your DVD subscription for free. If you want to keep your DVD/streaming package you have to pay quite a bit more a month. Though one of the things I didn't see mentioned by anybody was that if you only keep one or the other you actually end up paying less. But who cares about those details?

So began all the bitching and moaning on Facebook (and I imagine Twitter too, but I'm not on Twitter). I really couldn't believe how mad people seemed to be. You could practically hear the foam around some people's mouths. Lots of mean and nasty words for whoever it is that runs Netflix. But who's to blame, really.

Let me spell out how this whole thing came to be.

Netflix hits the Internet, offering a respite for people sick of the arduous task of walking a few blocks or driving a car to the video store. And for those people who find it impossible to return movies on time there are no late fees. Many people sign up despite the fact that they have local video stores nearby that do things like pay taxes to support the schools, fire firefighters and police in the area. After not too long the local video stores stop making money. A vast majority of them close down, despite there being a dedicated group of us that stick with them. Even big corporate behemoths like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster go under.

Competition thoroughly vanquished, Netflix is now a virtual monopoly in the movie rental business. What do monopolies do? They charge whatever the hell price they want for their goods and services, because where the hell else are you going to get those goods and services?

So to all those people that jumped on the Netflix bandwagon early on and are now complaining about them raising the prices, I say fuck you. You're the reason that I had to finally give in and join to begin with. I was perfectly happy walking to my local video store but now I have none near me thanks to you.

I'm not sure if it is people in general or just Americans (this is what I suspect) that have such a disconnect from cause and effect. I hear some of my friends who drive to work everyday bitch about how bad the traffic is and how it frustrates them, without even considering that traffic is so bad because they drive to work everyday! Everybody else is the cause but not them. I hear many lament the loss of book stores and music stores, but press anybody on how much stuff they purchased from Amazon (yet another company that doesn't pay sales tax - and has an army of lobbyists fighting attempts to change the laws so local business owners stand a fighting chance and to salvage decimated local government budgets) compared to how much they bought from the bookstore or record store - before they closed - and I bet I know what the answer is for a majority of them.

And don't think Amazon won't inch their prices up once they don't have the competition from Borders or Barnes & Noble anymore.

Think about this the next time you're ordering online instead of going down to your local shop. What is the result of the choice you make? And not just on you, but on our economy and world as a whole.

Oh, and quit complaining about paying too much for something that cost a hell of a lot less than it did ten years ago.*


*Do the math - if you watch more than five movies a month on the 2 DVD + streaming plan you are paying less per rental than you did at the video store back in about 2000 or so.

Peace Through Redneck Music

I'm a huge fan of the Playing For Change project that was started a few years ago by music producer Mark Johnson. He recorded street musicians all over the world playing various parts of the same song and then put it all together to create these fantastic tracks of beautiful music. (If you've never heard of this watch the video that started it all, Stand By Me. Then go buy the albums) On top of the wonderful music, Johnson also used this project as a chance to raise money to build music schools in impoverished areas around the world. So, you know, he's an awesome guy all the way around.

I've heard him talking a lot in interviews about the project. One of the lines he always seems to use is something about the power of music making us a part of something bigger than ourselves. Certainly a romantic and poetic thing to say, but I always kind of thought it had a decent amount of hyperbole. As much as I love music it is just music, right?

Maybe it's not hyperbole.

A few weeks ago I went to the Old Town School of Folk Music for a show by Southern Culture on the Skids, a band I've seen several times. SCOTS is always a fun show. The Old Town School was the most unlikely venue for them, a seated space that also has some tables directly in front of the stage where lots of wine sipping goes on. Not anything like any of the other venues I've seen this usually raucous band.

On paper it seems odd that I would go see a band like SCOTS. No band may be prouder than their redneck Southern heritage. I grew up in the South but have vowed to never live south of the Mason-Dixon ever again. They like to throw fried chicken at the crowd during shows. I'm a proud vegetarian. They seem to have a fascination with both Mexican wrestling and car racing. I have a hard time thinking of two things I may dislike more.

But I do love this band anyway. Probably because of just how genuine they are. It's not really hillbilly shtick as some people think. They are just hillbillies.

This particular night had the strangest combination of people in the crowd. I got there late and was sitting on a bench in the lobby while the opening act was playing. There was a guy sitting next to me who asked if I had been inside. When I told him no he told me that he had to leave because the band playing was getting too political. "Why can't they just play music," he said.

I know there are a lot of people who don't necessarily like political music, but I find that people who walk out of a show because the band is being "political" do it not because they don't like political music but because they don't agree with the politics being expressed at that moment. I didn't say anything to the guy, I wasn't about to get in to it with anybody.

Beyond that guy we had a mix of rockabilly hipsters (think the Brian Setzer look), the middle-aged hippies that are a constant presence at the Old Town School, the aforementioned wine-sipping upper-middle class crowd, t-shirt wearing music nerds like myself, hillbilly hipsters who wear John Deer hats to be ironic and also honest-to-goodness real hillbilly types wearing John Deer hats because they drive John Deers on their farm.

I sat there watching the show with this diverse mix of people (OK, diverse mix of white people, let's be honest) and I was even more in awe of this band. As usual, the band invited people to join them on stage and dance. Middle-aged hippies were dancing next to rednecks in from the farm, t-shirt-wearing music geek was dancing next to ironic hipster, the school's young and perky go-go class instructor (seriously) was showing moves to a pre-teen farmer's daughter who was wearing a John Deer hat to match her dad's. Downtown upper middle-class mingled with rural working-class. Those with a taste for micro brews were shaking it with those who guzzle PBR.

Even better, I'm sure that liberals danced with conservatives and Christians danced with atheists. The way that we should.

They all helped with the traditional throwing of the fried chicken from the stage.

All this because of a band that plays the oddest mix of country & western, bluegrass, 1950s pop, 1960s rock, a weird take on traditional Hawaiian, psychedelic, rockabilly, easy listening, rhythm & blues and somehow all blended together with surf guitar.

It was obvious that there were probably more people in the room that voted for George W. Bush than in any other concert I've ever been to. I have no idea what SCOTS political leanings are, mostly because I don't think they've ever done a political song. They are about fun and if you don't want to have fun they are going to make you anyway.

Before playing the song "For Lovers Only" lead singer Rick Miller started encouraging couples in the crowd to put their arms around each other. Down at a front table was a rockabilly hipster with his girlfriend. Miller went straight to him and told the guy he should put his arm around her. The hipster wouldn't do it. Miller even stepped in front of the mic stand and got really close to the guy, pleading with him to put his arms around his date, telling him how pretty she was and, "don't you want to put your arm around her?" The guy still wouldn't budge.

The crowd got really quiet trying to hear what he was saying to the guy - since Miller was in front of the mic now - when there was a single voice that yelled out from the balcony. "For god's sake, put your arm around her!"

The crowd exploded in laughter and cheering, and rockabilly hipster guy finally put his arm around his date. May have been the loudest applause of the night when he did it. And despite his best efforts, for the first time all night the guy looked like he was having fun.

Southern Culture on the Skids strikes again.

What's Become Of Me?

I'm not sure why I've been reflecting on my middle-aged self lately. Maybe the mid-life crisis is starting (oh my wife will be so lucky!) or maybe it's just that I look back at my life so far and then look at my daughter, recognizing that she has all of that to go yet.

I look at her at the age of 2-1/2 and it boggles my mind that she will some day be in her 20s, out of the house and living on her own. Possibly in a different city than her parents or even a different country. Hopefully I'm the kind of parent who will encourage her to do all the things I should have done when I was younger. Like strap on a backpack and travel the world. The last thing I want to be is stifling to my kid the way my mother was to me. Her life should be about her, not me.

I suppose I have hopes that she'll be doing more with herself than I was in my 20s. Don't get me wrong, I had a ton of fun in those years and I think I really found myself. But I spent a lot of time chasing a career as a theatre artist that, let's face it, I was amazingly mediocre at and had no real business thinking that it was what I could do with my life. Despite some decent success in my college theatre days I really should have figured out a lot sooner that I was never going to succeed in it. Would have saved me a lot of disappointed feelings over the years.

So I do hope that my daughter doesn't end up chasing a dream all through her 20s that she's just going to give up a quit in her mid-30s. Hopefully she has a lot of her mother, the doctor, in her. Maybe just a touch of me so she's not only working hard all the time and is having some fun. 80% Mom, 20% Da would be a decent mix.

Of course, trying to guess how my daughter's life will turn out is about the same as trying to beat the house in Vegas. It ain't gonna happen. Hell, trying to figure out how my own life will turn out is impossible. So many stages of my life I never saw coming.

I ended up living in Seattle at the age of 23. When I was 22 I had no idea that would happen. Seriously, even a year earlier I didn't see that coming. Being married and having a kid is a complete shock to me. I never saw myself having a kid. Lots of parents are the types who have been dreaming about the day they'd have kids since they were kids themselves. I got excited about being a dad about, oh, maybe a week before my wife gave birth. (Honestly, I think this makes me a better parent, not having a lifetime of expectations about what raising kids would/should be like). Scared shitless is what I was feeling the rest of the time.

So many things I never saw coming, like giving lectures and workshops to medical school faculty in Taiwan. I never even imagined visiting Taiwan and it turned out to be one of my favorite places. Living in New York, being on a game show, talking to Peter Buck in a bar in NYC, meeting a random Buddhist guy from Australia in an Indian restaurant in Cambodia and having a full night of grand conversation, the same thing happening with a singer-songwriter from Manchester in a bar in NYC.......

Life really can be a series of unexpected curve balls. And that's a good thing. Better that then how much of my extended family has lived their lives - living in the same town where they were born, never seeing any other place in the world beyond the Midwestern United States.

I was trying to look at my life the other day through the eyes of the 25-year-old me. A weird exercise if ever there was one.

I was giddy when we found an apartment that was right across from the Whole Foods, which made it my favorite apartment ever. Sleeping late on Saturday means getting to stay in bed to all of 8:00 (at 25, 8:00am was fucking early). Having post-it notes all over a computer monitor at work to remind me of things to do. Actually having a job that involves a desk and a computer. I wear ties to work. Daycare. Diapers. Parent-teacher conferences (yes, we've already had one of these). Hanging around playgrounds.

It dawned on me that the 25-year-old me would think the 40-year-old me was a big old loser.

But what does that slacker hippy stoner know? That dumbshit thought that buying a $50 bong with his credit card (without having the money to pay the bill) was the coolest thing ever.

When Technology Is Awesome (Instead Of Sucks)

I'm not a technophile by any stretch. I'm not, despite what some of my friends might tell you, a Luddite either.

I love things like BitTorrent for giving me the ability to get hundreds of live shows from my favorite musicians. I hate texting - with its inherent passive-aggressiveness - and fact that everyone seems to just disappear in to their hand held device in lieu of actually interacting with people or maybe even reading a book.

I love that I can burn mix CDs instead of spend hours making a mix tape. I hate that iPods are ruining music and the way we listen to it. (And they are, don't even try to argue that point with me.)

I love Facebook. I hate Facebook.

The point is, I do love a lot of the technological advances and how they make our lives - or at least mine - better. I don't love it just for technology's sake like so many people seem to.

But there are some moments that happen as a direct result of 21st Century technology that make me just think, "Wow, this is so awesome."

I had recently fallen in love with a song on YouTube that I found due to a link from a singer-songwriter from Manchester that I met in Harlem one night. (Full story about that meeting here.) The song is Train Driver by a band called Becca and The Broken Biscuits, who are also from Manchester (I think). I really haven't been able to get enough of this song it is just so brilliant and catchy.

I've also been taking guitar lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music the last year or so. I really wanted to learn how to play Train Driver. And because Becca has a Facebook page I was able to drop her an email and ask her to give me instructions on how she plays it. She sent me an email with some chord shapes, her tuning for the song and where she puts the capo. Then I took it to my guitar teacher who was able to translate guitar-speak in to something a bunch of amateurs could figure out.

So I got to fall in love with a song because of YouTube, by a Manchester, England band that really never would have had a way to share it with the rest of the world without already being an established act with a record label. I was able to get the songwriter to help teach me how to play the song because I was able to contact her through the internet.

None of these things could have happened fifteen years ago. How would I have ever heard a song that doesn't get played on the radio where I live? How would I ever have kept in touch with a random singer-songwriter from overseas that I met in a club one night in New York, for him to tell me about another cool artist? How would someone get in touch with a performer to ask them how they play their song?

Even better, after turning my guitar teacher on to this piece of music - he fell in love with it himself and told me he saw why I sought out Becca to learn how to play such a special song - and getting the class to learn it, I put up the video camera to record us playing it. I then loaded it on to YouTube and sent the link to Becca so she could see it.

Her response was beautiful. She loved that a group of people thousands of miles away learned how to play her song and said she was moved.

And the internet age had a lot to do with making it happen.

But at the end of the day it was still about human connection. No, I hold no odd delusion that Becca and I are now really good friends or something. We've never met in person, but she has been very sweet to a random fan who emailed her. And that's pretty cool.

But even though technology helped to facilitate this chain of events, it was at the end of the day about people connecting with people. Al Baker played a set of music in a club in Harlem that blew me away, I went up to tell him how much I loved his music, he joined my friend Joe and I at our table, I bought him a bunch of beers (I had won a bunch of money earlier that day on a TV game show - yes, really - and was celebrating) and he gave me his CD.

Al and I stayed in touch on email and Facebook, he eventually posted a link to Becca's video and I listened to the song over and over and over. I emailed Becca to learn the song, took it to my guitar class, my guitar teacher loves the song too, we share it with other students in the class and many of them really get in to it. Becca's YouTube hits almost double. (Though, to show what a stupid place the world can be, Becca's got a couple thousand hits compared to, say, Rebecca Black's gazillion or whatever).

We as a class then get the opportunity to show an up-and-coming performer how much we love one of her songs by playing it for her. Several people start asking if it's possible to bring Becca to visit the Old Town School. The whole thing warmed my heart and made me feel great about my fellow humans.

It's all about how we use our modern devices. Do we disappear in to our iPhones, never looking up to even see others? Do we spend twelve hours a day in a dark room playing online video games or ranting on message boards - or worse, comment sections of articles?

Or do we do something else? Something that makes us feel more connected, in a much more real way.


Below is Becca and The Broken Biscuits' Train Driver video, then the video I filmed and sent her. (Better to click the link at the top of each screen and watch in YouTube's site, these videos never fit on my blog page)

Parenting Oblivion

I'm riding the bus to work yesterday (one of the downsides of moving to Chicago from New York is that I actually have to be on the bus instead of the subway a lot) and a guy gets on the bus with his daughter, who appears to be about five or six. They sit across from me, the little girl with her backpack on looking cute as hell. She sits there in silence, I'm reading my book and not really paying attention to anything else.

Then I look up at some point and see that the dad is listening to his headphones.

After parents smacking their kids, this infuriates me more than just about anything I see parents do. I mean, come on! You're sitting there with your daughter and you escape in to your own little world and don't interact with her at all? I do not understand this type of parent at all. Why have kids if you don't want to talk to them?

Now this was a young father it seemed. And certainly looked to be someone who is probably a lot less well off than me. So there is a very good chance that this guy wasn't really planning on having kids at this point in his life, was just liking having sex with his girlfriend.

But still, it happened. You have a job to do now. A big job.

I'll bet if you ask this guy if he's doing the things he needs to be doing as a father he would probably say yes. The little girl was clean and well dressed. She didn't look hungry. He was getting her off to school. Her basic needs seem to be well taken care of.

But there is so much more to being a parent, and it drives me batty when I see parents that don't get that.

I never, ever put my headphones on when I'm out with my daughter. I can't believe that anybody even thinks that's OK. How could you not want to have conversations with your kid when you are riding on the bus or train?

I know that my kid already has an advantage over this guy's kid just based on the condition she was born in to. My wife makes great money and we're white in America. I know that it will be easier for us. But I think that's why it so much more important for this guy to take a bigger interest in his daughter. When parents are involved kids do better in school and in life. A lot of these parents will also be the ones bitching about the quality of the schools in their neighborhood, and that's a valid point. But what are they doing to help? Don't they think their involvement makes a difference in how their kid does in school, how well they learn? I have my doubts that the kind of parent who listens to music and ignores their own child on a bus is the kind of parent that shows up for parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings.

Yes, we should all have equal advantages, it is not fair that my kid has a leg up on his from the moment she was born. But the answer is not to just say "fuck it" and put on the headphones.

And I think that's what these parents are doing when I see them. Just giving up. Instead of talking to this amazing little person that they created, helping them to engage in the world around them, they'd rather shut themselves off from that world.

And along with it, their own kid.

What I've Learned - Year 2

I've now been a father for over two years now and, as I did after the first year, I have some reflections on what I've learned. I actually accepted a job a few months ago, so I'm now a working parent instead of a stay-at-home dad. I'm not really sure if this affected my outlook and opinion of parenting or not. We shall see...

I'm pretty sure my wife and I are the only parents of a toddler who don't refer to ourselves in the third person. You know, stuff like, "Bring that apple to Daddy." I really expected I would start doing this even though it annoys the hell out of me, just because every parent I've ever seen does it. Thankfully I've never even felt the urge. We all hate anybody who refers to themselves in the third person in every other situation, why do we find it OK when parents do it? I really don't get why parents do this anyway. A one-year-old is perfectly capable of understanding the concept of me, my, you, yours, he, his, etc. At least mine is. Treat them stupid and they will be stupid, I say.

I think we are also the only parents that don't use cutesy names like PJs, blankey, boo-boo and the like. Another thing I don't understand about other parents.

Reading your kid the books you remember from your own childhood can be a double-edged sword as they may not be as awesome as you remember. Sure, those Richard Scarry books are just as cool as you remember. But when I read Curious George I got sick to my stomach. The man with the yellow hat is not George's "friend" as the books refer to him, he is his captor. He captured George as a baby and took him out of the jungle to the city. George is his monkey-slave. And this supposedly makes George happy? Evil, evil book. I can't believe our parents read that to us.

The original two Corduroy books, by Don Freeman (which were not a part of my childhood), are so fantastic I can hardly stand it. All the rest, written by different authors after Freeman died, are such complete pieces of shit I can hardly stand it.

After having been a stay-at-home parent and now being a working parent and can now say with certainty that being a stay-at-home is a lot easier. I know this isn't necessarily the most PC thing to say, but I've been on both sides. Let me just say this, my new job doesn't have a nap time.

I'm soooooooooo ready for the diaper years to be over. It's another one of those things that make me wonder why people have more than one kid. You want to extend the diaper years?

I laugh even more now than when I hung around sketch comedy actors/writers. And I hung around great sketch comedy people. Two-year-olds are fucking hilarious.

I'm so happy my daughter has decided to call me "Da" instead of "Daddy" or "Dad." I don't know why, maybe just because it is less common (outside of Ireland at least) and when I'm around a bunch of other parents I'll know if it's my kid calling me. Unless those kids at daycare start influencing her with that pedestrian "Daddy" stuff.

I'm so impressed when my kid does something new, like the first time she counted to three or when she made it all the way to ten. I know she's not like a super genius, smartest kid in the world or anything. But when you are hanging around a little human who can suddenly do something she couldn't do the day before it sure seems genius.

I know people call it the "terrible twos" (really a degrading thing to call a kid) but I like having a two-year-old so much more than a six-month-old.

CDs of popular or classical music that are rerecorded to be "for kids" are so utterly stupid. Just play Vivaldi for your kid, not the horribly simplistic and shallow version that Baby Einstein puts out. If you want to introduce your kids to The Beatles, then play them a Beatles record. What's the point of a lullaby version of The Beatles? To annoy everyone? These things seem to be more likely to make your kid a music hater.

You can raise your kid in a green(er) way. There are better options for diapers out there, you don't have to use chlorine-filled disposables. You also don't need to surround yourself with a house full of plastic shit. You have to lay down the law with your family and friends and risk offending/upsetting some of them, but you can avoid having nothing but plastic toys. When you ban plastic you get better quality toys anyway. We have also proven wrong all those people that said after we had a kid we would have to buy a car.

After being offered my job - I wasn't actually looking for a job when this all came up - I had less than a month to find a decent daycare for my daughter. I'm pretty sure I've never experienced a higher level of stress in my life.

I hear lots of parents say that raising a child is the hardest thing you'll ever do. I think these people have never done anything in their lives that is actually hard. Raising a kid is a cakewalk compared to just about anything else this side of being born an heiress.

I think I may have one of the most laid-back two-year-olds ever. Whenever she's starting to get testy and having a hissy, acting at her absolute worst, most other parents will react with, "Wait, that's her worst? Hell, that's nothing." So maybe it is just raising my kid that is so easy.

The most important thing I've learned is that I'm really goddamn good at this, being a parent. I know that seems smug and egotistical but I can't help it, I just am. I totally thought I was going to suck at being a parent. I feared it. But it turns out I am so awesome at it that I'm amazed by myself. Seriously, I have never been the most confident person about anything. I always questioned that I was a very good theatre director even when I was having success at it, and feel similar about what I do for a living now. But parenting? I'll go toe-to-toe with anybody. I try not be this way, I really do, because I know how annoying it makes me. But when I see most other parents in action I just can't help but think to myself, "What fucking morons."

Terrible, I know. I shouldn't be so mean toward other parents. I'm sure most of the ones I see are doing a perfectly acceptable job. Just not as good as me.

I really have never been as good at anything as I am at being a dad. I guess that's also why I know this isn't that hard. Because if I can be good at this...

Park Little Doggy

It was in the news today that parking meter prices in Chicago are going up again. I say "news" but it isn't actually a new piece of information, it has been known for a long time what the parking meter increases will be each year through 2013, after which they will go up based on inflation. So it is not like there was a surprise announcement yesterday, it's just that the Chicago media is now talking about it as part of their year-end coverage to go along with all of their top ten (whatever) lists.

But the drivers are bitching nonetheless.

I've seen posts from several of my Chicago Facebook friends complaining about the hike, acting as if it is some sort of human rights violation to be charged five bucks an hour to park in the Loop and a buck-fifty in the neighborhoods.

I'm going to leave aside the issue of selling the parking meter rights to a private company for an upfront lump payment to the city. It was (another) wrong-headed move by Daley that will cost the city billions of dollars over the life of the 75-year contract while lining the pockets of a corporation that probably lined Daley's pockets and those of his crony pals. I do hope it is overturned in court.

But what most drivers in Chicago complain about is the cost of parking to them personally, not the cost of this deal to the city. To them I say:

Get over yourselves. Stop your whining you ungrateful brat. Damn, this country is practically paved over from coast to coast to make life as easy as possible for your pollution machine and it is still not enough for you. Do you realize how good you've got it and how cheap your driving costs really are?

First let's look at why high parking rates are good public policy. Talk to any person who specializes in city planning or traffic and they will tell you that high on-street parking rates decrease traffic congestion (something else you hate, even though you are the cause) and improve air quality. It's true. When meter rates are low compared to garage rates in the same neighborhood, drivers will circle around many times, slowly, looking for a spot on the street. This ties up traffic and puts more carbon in the air. More drivers would just pull in to a garage if they didn't see a street spot right away.

If anything, Chicago meter rates - as well as those of every other city in the U.S. - are still way too low. They should be raised to be higher than the average garage spot in the neighborhood.

It is not only by market rate comparisons that parking is too cheap. It takes money, taxpayer money, to maintain and repair those spots where cars park on the street. Even at $5/hour you are getting a good deal, and that free spot by your apartment is a FANTASTIC deal. Not only should meter rates be extremely higher than they are now, there should be no such thing as a free street spot.

You drivers are some of the most subsidized people in America and you still can't stop complaining about everything. Nine out of every ten transportation dollars in this country goes to you and your wasteful mode of transport. Your parking is subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Your fuel is amazingly cheap compared to the real cost - most oil companies don't pay any taxes and are even given tax subsidies, along with the billions of dollars it cost in military, diplomatic and espionage spending to keep American oil interests protected overseas to keep it flowing without interruption. And almost none of that shows up on your fuel tax, which is a pittance. If you were paying the real cost of your gasoline you'd be paying more than ten bucks a gallon. Instead, people like me who don't even own a car have to chip in so your lazy ass doesn't have to walk to the grocery store.

All this money invested in an amazingly inefficient mode of transportation. Meanwhile, transit systems get what amounts to chump change to operate on and are the first budgets to get slashed when there are money problems. The Chicago "L" has basically no more track miles - and less stations - than it had 60 years ago, despite the addition of the southwest-serving Orange Line in 1993.

You get cheap parking, and you complain. You have cheap fuel, and you complain. You complain about the traffic, which you cause. You complain about getting a ticket for parking illegally. You complain about the red light cameras, I guess because you think you should be allowed to run red lights with impunity. You complain about getting speeding tickets when you are, you know, speeding. (But I was only going ten over!)

You complain about the condition of the streets. You complain about the construction zones when they are fixing those streets. (And if you think the streets are bad in Chicago, you really haven't spent enough time on the woefully under-maintained sidewalks or ridden a bike on what laughingly passes for bike lanes).

You complain about the lack of snow removal from the streets. (Again, compare the streets to the sidewalks after it snows and then tell me which one gets more attention) You complain about the snow plows in your way.

Everything is done to make your life as easy as possible and all you do is bitch, bitch, bitch.

All the while you are polluting the air I breath. So to you I say:

Shut the fuck up already.

And get off you damn cell phone and keep your eyes on the road.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

"I decided talking to a conservative is like talking to your refrigerator. You know, the light goes on the light goes off; it's not going to do anything that isn't built in to it. And I'm not going to talk to a conservative anymore than I talk to my damn refrigerator." ---Utah Phillips (1935-2008)

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Pick up my New York Times from the hallway outside our apartment door this morning and start perusing the headlines before my daughter would wake up. First one I notice is an article titled, Climate Change Doubt Is Tea Party Article of Faith. I start reading the article and it opens with a scene of an incumbent Indiana Democratic congressman defending his climate bill vote in front of a hostile crowd full of people self-identified as part of the "tea party" movement. He calls global warming real and indisputable, just like the vast majority of scientists who know anything about climate.

He is showered with boos. This is the next bit of the article:

...including a hearty growl from Norman Dennison, a 50-year-old electrician and founder of the Corydon Tea Party.

“It’s a flat-out lie,” Mr. Dennison said in an interview after the debate, adding that he had based his view on the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and the teaching of Scripture. “I read my Bible,” Mr. Dennison said. “He made this earth for us to utilize.”

Seriously.

And here we have the fundamental problem with trying to talk sense to conservative Christians. Put the facts in front of their face, shower them with reason, use real data to make your argument and you will be wasting your time.

The liars that are Glenn, Rush, Sean, Sarah, et al; a 2,000-year-old piece of poorly written fiction. This is who they will choose to believe, this is where they get their "truth." These sources give them the narrative as they want it to be and that's good enough for them, no matter that it flies in the face of all common sense or what the actual truth might be.

This is how it is possible for Obama to be simultaneously a Socialist and a Nazi. How he is trying to make you enroll is big, bad, government-run socialized health-care and also take away your Medicare. How he wants to redistribute the wealth and is also the puppet of Wall Street bankers. they believe every one of these things about him, never mind that they are all contradictory of each other. I suppose that makes it just like believing in their bible.

They are stupid and they are very proud of it.

This country is fucked.

Screw Tolerance

Things are heating up for gay rights issues in this country. "Don't ask, don't tell" is gasping at its final breaths and the issue of gay marriage is winding its way through the court system on its way to an inevitable showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court, and even if it loses there the next generation of Americans - the ones who are now in their teens and twenties - will legalize same-sex marriage anyway.

This is all great news, as the bigots - though it has taken way too long - are losing again. That is always a good thing. It has been, and still is, a long hard-fought battle for equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in America. We're winning the argument, us progressives, because, well, the argument on the other side is stupid.

There is one aspect to the argument that comes from the liberal side that I do have an issue with. It seems that since the 90s we have been urging people to be "tolerant" of the queers.

I say, fuck tolerance.

Gay is not something to tolerate and it sends the wrong message to the bigots and hate-mongers of the world.

I tolerate the asshole walking down the street texting who bumps in to me, instead of elbowing him in the face like I really want to do. Because in a civil society I need to resist those urges, even if someone deserves it.

I tolerate the moron on the subway listening to his headphones so loud that everyone can hear his music, instead of ripping his iPod out of his hands and crushing it with my foot. See above reason.

I tolerate conservative bible-thumpers, instead of stabbing them in the throat. Because there are too many too kill them all and it would be very messy and tiring.

The point is, you don't tolerate something that's not bad because there is nothing to tolerate. By using this word you are giving credibility to the bigotry. You are saying it is OK to think of homosexuals as sinners who are going to hell, but just be hush-hush about it.

Look, if two people enter a committed relationship with the intention of spending their lives together, regardless of their gender, it is either a) something to be celebrated and honored, or b) something to not give a shit about at all. Period. There are no other options. And you can switch back and forth between the two. I have friends and family that are answer "a" and others that are answer "b."

I'm not sure who decided on this "tolerance" mantra many years ago, and I wish I could find out what they were thinking. I suspect that comes from the left's own faulty tolerance. Specifically tolerance of fucked-up religious beliefs. Too many people on the left try to cling to their own religion that they go too much out of their way to respect the religion of others. So we ended up tip-toeing around their religion and the result is asking them for their tolerance. But in that process we give credibility to their dumb religious beliefs and we head down the road of respecting all sorts of asinine things, from polygamy to female genital mutilation. Where will it stop?

What we are supposed to say to these people is, "fuck your religion."

And there are only two real reason we have to make in our argument of why their religion should be fucked:

One is, your religion has nothing to do with what should or shouldn't be against the law in a secular nation. If you want to live in a theocracy go ahead and move to Saudi Arabia or the Vatican.

Second, I call bullshit that this is really about your religion, anyway. There are tons of things in the bible that you choose to ignore (like slavery or selling your daughter being just fine and dandy with your god) so why are you so hung up on this one? I know why, and it has nothing to do with your religion. It's because the thought of two dudes doing it grosses you out. (And let's face it, if only women were queer they would have been allowed to get married years ago, because even your most conservative born-again guy thinks two chicks getting it on is hot.) OK, maybe not all of you are grossed out by it. As we've learned from several militant "anti-gay" preacher-crusaders, some of you are turned on by it and it scares you.

But you know what? Just because gay guys can get married doesn't mean you have to have sex with guys. Or watch those guys have sex.

Hey, truth be told - and I'm sorry my gay friends - a couple of guys going at it kind of grosses me out, too. I thought maybe I was hipster enough in college and my years in Seattle in the 90s that maybe I could go gay or bi, but I just don't dig the fellas.

One night out at a bar in Seattle one of my gay pals planted a big old kiss on me, wet and sloppy with a tongue in my mouth. I acted all cool about it, but in the back of my head I was thinking, "Yuck! Gross! Ewww!" Just wasn't my thing, you know? It certainly affirmed that I'm straight, no question. (I later told said friend that I didn't enjoy it and he never tried to do it again, and we stayed friends. Just like I would do with a girl I was friends with but not attracted to.)

But just because I didn't dig it why would I try to stop him from sticking his tongue (or dick for that matter) down the throat of some guy who does? Why would I care? I was never in to black girls either - just never had any attraction to any - but that doesn't mean I should want to stop other white guys from hooking up with black women.

People have incredibly varied sexual and relationship preferences - an infinite amount, really - gay, straight and bi. They don't have to be in to the same thing as me for me to be OK for them to exists, or even be friends with them.

People are attracted to who they are attracted to, for reasons they only have to explain to themselves, and that's a beautiful thing. To try to keep them apart is such an asshole thing to do. It's as stupid as hating people for being left handed.

So fuck tolerance. As the bumper sticker I saw years ago said, "I don't tolerate differences, I celebrate them."

I think we need less tolerance in the world. Specifically, we need to stop tolerating people who use an over 2,000-year-old piece of fiction as an excuse for a pass on their fucked up bigotry.

I will never, not ever, tolerate them.

Put That On My Tab

I like a good bar.

Scratch that. I LOVE a good bar.

There are very few places I'm happier than a great bar. Give me a nice wood bar counter, a stool (preferably with a back), a hip and talkative bartender who knows how to pull a draft just right, decent and varied beer selection, tasty pub grub, a good jukebox, some friendly and interesting folks sitting at the bar and, for good measure, a small stage for music and I'm as happy as can be. The best bars have no TVs but that's not a deal breaker. So many bars have TVs these days that it can be hard to find one without them.

One of my favorite things about going to bars has always been striking up conversations with other people sitting at the bar. I just love being able to chat with other people sitting there drinking beer. A bartender that you can talk to is also essential. This is why I hated living in Boston so goddamn much. In three years not once was I able to chat up a bar patron or bartender. Hell, bartenders in Boston are such assholes (and apparently don't care about their tips) that I've sat at a bar in that town for up to ten minutes with an empty beer glass in front of me before I finally get asked if I want another. The TV show Cheers was such a fucking lie.

The best thing, though, is when you are talking to someone and when the bartender brings your next round somebody says, "I got this one."

Now, being bought a drink in a bar is never about getting a free drink. Unless you are a total dick you will end up picking up just as many of the rounds as the other guy. Or if the other person just really insist on picking them up. That happened to me on a train ride from New York to Chicago last year. I shared a table in the cafe car with a young lawyer going from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh who kept buying every round of the Sam Adams and wouldn't hear of me paying for any of them.

But for the most part it is not about getting some free drinks. No, what is nice about picking up rounds is that you are saying to the other person, "Hey, I'm enjoying hanging out and talking to you so I want you to stick around."

I know it may sound goober-istic and hokey, but there is something beautiful about that kind of basic human connection that often seems to only be able to happen over alcohol. I once heard the conservative columnist David Brooks theorize that the reason there was so much antagonistic animosity between the political parties in recent years was because people in Washington didn't drink together anymore. Not my favorite guy in the world, but I thought he made a great point.

While these kind of connections may not be good for the liver, they do seem exceptionally good for the (for lack of a better word) soul.

And they can happen without warning in the most unexpected places.

I was in Poughkeepsie, NY one night with a few friends for a Wilco show back in 2004. Four of us were walking around looking for a bar in downtown Poughkeepsie to go to before the show, not wanting to hang out in the line for several hours like the other Wilco geeks. My friend Noam was one of the four and he was going to school in Poughkeepsie at the time, but Vassar kids don't actually go to the bars in town so he knew nothing about any of them. Those Vassar kids are a confusing bunch.

The four of us walked up around the corner from The Chance Theater, where Wilco was going to be playing and came upon a nondescript bar with big windows in front. It was fairly well lit inside and we could see people shooting pool and a good amount of the crowd inside. It appeared that every person in the bar was black.

"We HAVE to go to this bar," said Ronen, a guy that I had met in Boston through the Wilco message board, ViaChicago.

Now remember, we're in town to see Wilco, a band that competes with OK Go, Radiohead and The Flaming Lips for title of World's Whitest Rock Group, with fans to match. And the four of us were no exception, despite my buddy Noam's love of hip-hop. He's still an Upper West Side Jew.

So we grab seats the bar. Oddly enough, with a bar full of black people, the bartender looks pretty rednecky, even sporting a mullet. We order four beers and the girl with us, a friend of Ronen whose name escapes me, says she'll get the first round. The bartender says, "That's six bucks."

She replies, "I've got all four."
"Yea, that's six bucks," he says.

I loved this bar immediately.

So we're sitting there chatting and most of us are getting close to the bottom of our first mug of beer when the bartender comes over and puts four shot glasses upside down in front of us. What the hell? We all kind of look confused at the bartender and he tells us that the next round is on the guy at the end of the bar (the upside down shot glasses were markers for the bartender to keep track). We look down to the end of the bar and there is a black man probably in his late 50s or early 60s sitting there, wearing a suit and hat combo that can only be pulled off by older black dudes. Made me think of Lightnin' Hopkins in his later years.

Guy raises his cocktail to us and we raise our beers back to him. He then came over to talk to us. Told us that he wanted to buy us a drink because out of "all those white kids going to that concert" we were the only ones who came in to that bar. "Kids" being a relative term I suppose, I was 33 at the time. He thought that was cool of us. And it was true, there was nobody from the Wilco crowd in this place and it was practically spitting distance from the club. I don't think there was a closer bar.

He stuck around our side of the bar and we had a grand time talking to him. Eventually we would have several of the bar's regulars hanging around with us, shooting the shit. Just about all of them asked us who we were seeing that night and responded with, "Who's Wilco?"

I'm pretty sure that at least three other guys in the bar that night bought our rounds and I know the bartender himself treated us to two. I don't think I spent any money before we left for the show.

(A humorous side story to this night - The only other white person in the bar besides us and the bartender was this middle-aged woman who totally fit the description of "barfly" and was all over Noam, who happened to be all of 19 at the time but had a fake ID. She was in to him in big way, to the point where I think she even tried to get him to go to her place.)

We were having such a great time there that we skipped the opening act and barely made it to the club for Wilco's opening song.

One of my favorite nights ever in a bar. We made just an amazing human connection with a really nice group of people. And yes, the result of that connection was being completely shitfaced by the end of the night. But I think you'd be hard pressed to think of another place besides a bar where such a thing would happen. I doubt the night would have been as fun or social if we were in a coffee house. Would anybody have bought us a latte?

There's something about a bar. It is a beautiful thing. Especially when somebody else is buying.